Paul Lejeune-Jung

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Paul Lejeune-Jung

Paul Lejeune-Jung (born March 16, 1882 in Cologne , † September 8, 1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee ), actually called Paul Adolf Franz Lejeune Jung, was a German economist , politician , syndic of the pulp industry and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Honor roll at the Theodorianum high school in Paderborn: right side, third from below: Paul Lejeune-Jung
Stolperstein , Lietzenseeufer 7, in Berlin-Charlottenburg
Memorial plaque of the martyrs of the Nazi era in the crypt of the Saint Hedwig's Cathedral in Berlin-Mitte

family

Lejeune-Jung came from an old Huguenot family in Berlin . Ancestors ran the family-owned Jungsche Apotheke there , where Theodor Fontane worked as a provisional. Committed to the Huguenot tradition, the family was French Reformed. Lejeune-Jung's mother Elise geb. Bruère (1848–1912), a Catholic Rhinelander, had her children baptized Catholics. Thus a Catholic branch of the family developed here. The father Hugo Lejeune-Jung (1846-1889) went to sea as captain of the English merchant navy until he settled in Rathenow an der Havel after stops in Hamburg and Cologne, where his son Paul was born , where he died in 1889.

education

Paul Lejeune-Jung graduated from the secondary school in Rathenow and then switched to the humanistic grammar school Theodorianum in Paderborn, which is dominated by Catholicism, at his mother's wishes . For Lejeune-Jung, changing schools meant catching up on ancient Greek for three years and a considerable gap in Latin . In 1901 he graduated from high school and began studying Catholic theology with the intention of becoming a Catholic priest. After a few semesters he changed faculty to study philosophy and history at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn ; in the latter times he was at the medievalists Aloys Schulte on the subject of Walter Pagliara , Chancellor of the Norman-Hohenstaufen empire to Dr. phil. PhD .

Lejeune-Jung expanded his scientific basis by studying economics and economic history at the University of Berlin .

In 1902 he became a member of the Catholic theological student union "Eburonia" in Bonn, whose old rulers in 1927 largely (including Lejeune-Jung) joined the KDB Saxonia in Cologne in the Ring of Catholic German Fraternities (RKDB). After moving to Berlin, he became a band philistine at the KDB Gothia in Berlin in the RKDB.

Professional career

The year 1907 marks the beginning of his practice-oriented career. Until 1909 he worked as an economic assistant in the Reich Colonial Office and in the German Colonial Society, before switching to the paper and pulp industry in 1910, where he established his career at Feldmühle AG.

In 1913 he married Hedwig Foltmann (1888–1965), a daughter of the Breslau merchant Karl Foltmann and his wife Maria, geb. Hoeptner. The marriage had eight children. After Lejeune-Jung was employed during the First World War in the War Resource Department of the Prussian War Ministry, Wool Industry Department, he found his final professional position in 1921 as managing director of the Association of German Pulp Manufacturers. This was also the starting point for his later political career.

Political career

Ties to the German National People's Party (DNVP) existed early on , for which he was elected to the Reichstag in 1924 as the only Catholic member of Central Silesia in the constituency of Wroclaw . In the election in December of the same year he again entered the Reichstag, was a member and chairman of the trade policy committee in the following years and took part in the International Parliamentary Conferences in London in 1926 , in Rio de Janeiro in 1927 and in Berlin in 1929 .

An undated letter in connection with a memorandum of which Lejeune-Jung is one of the authors is attested for the early 1920s. The Fulda Bishops' Conference is informed of the intended establishment of the Reich Committee of Catholics in the German National People's Party . Lejeune-Jung identifies himself as a representative of the so-called right-wing Catholics, who were monarchically oriented in contrast to the republican oriented Catholic Center Party. In the letter, the authors distance themselves clearly from the Center Party , "which denies the outcome of all violence from God and instead proclaims the fateful heresy of popular sovereignty". The right-wing Catholics were not alone in their polemics against the center; on the contrary, an intra-Catholic dispute had arisen within the center party itself since 1919 about the relationship of the Catholics to the republican form of government.

Regardless of his political position as a member of parliament with a conservative conviction, Lejeune-Jung was one of the moderate forces within the DNVP that could bring themselves to work positively in the Weimar state. He was a member of the conservative German men's club . The referendum against the Young Plan sought by the chairman of the DNVP Alfred Hugenberg in 1929 prompted him and eleven other members of the Reichstag to resign from the DNVP faction, which meant that he had to give up a secure place on the list among the German nationalists. The resulting group founded the People's Conservative Association on January 28, 1930 , which participated in the parliamentary group of Christian-National Working Group (Chr.NA). On July 23, 1930, the People's Conservative Association merged with the Westarp Group, which had been excluded from the DNVP, to form the Conservative People's Party (KVP). However, the new party only won four seats in the September 1930 elections. Lejeune-Jung, who did not get a seat in the Reichstag, temporarily took over management, but on June 11, 1932, he joined the Center Party, to whose right wing he had connections before 1920.

Chancellor Heinrich Brüning had appointed Lejeune-Jung as an expert on the Franco-German Economic Commission as early as 1931. In the analysis of Franco-German economic relations that Lejeune-Jung undertakes in a note entitled Parisian Impressions, March 30 to April 10, 1930 , his ability to observe precisely and draw precise political conclusions becomes clear. The core of his supranational concept is closer cooperation between European states in the economic field, based on Franco-German understanding . Lejeune-Jung envisions the creation of a European market in which areas such as the potash industry, heavy industry, the automotive industry and the electrical industry play a central role. In doing so, he does not overlook the protectionist stance that French business leaders and politicians reveal when discussing concrete measures and which only refers to a customs union limited to agricultural products .

resistance

With the establishment of the National Socialist dictatorship after January 30, 1933, Lejeune-Jung was sidelined politically. He had expressed his negative attitude towards the Nazi regime in a letter to his friend Gottfried Treviranus : “The breach of the rule of law will, to the bitter end, deliver the Reich to a madman, unless the armed forces and the courts mark the breach of the constitution and overthrow the usurper . "

In 1941/42 he first became aware of concrete plans for a resistance against the unjust state . Contact was made with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , the former mayor of Leipzig and head of the civil resistance movement, through the former trade unionist Max Habermann . At his request, Lejeune-Jung drafted an economic policy concept for the time after the successful overthrow of the dictatorship. In the memorandum from the early summer of 1943, entitled Reichsgrundgesetz about economic imperial justice, he names the realm's property in mineral resources, the socialization of key industries, and the state's monopoly on transport, insurance and foreign trade as essential coordinates of the new economic system. At least two meetings took place in the Lejeune-Jungs house in the course of 1943, in which important members of the resistance took part. Among them were the former trade unionists Max Habermann, Hermann Kaiser , Wilhelm Leuschner and Julius Leber as well as Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg , former ambassador in Moscow, and Josef Wirmer .

Although Lejeune-Jung's revolutionary economic policy ideas did not find approval among all members of the resistance, Goerdeler held on to him as his future Minister of Economics in his cabinet.

Arrest and death

Memorial stone for Paul Lejeune-Jung on the family grave of his daughter Elisabeth Brinkmann, b. Lejeune-Jung, in the cemetery of the Twist community (Emsland) .

The failed assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , in the concrete plans of which Lejeune-Jung, according to his own statements before the People's Court, was not informed, then suddenly brought down all the concepts of a democratic government of the German Reich. Like thousands of others who were more or less involved in the entire resistance movement around July 20th, Lejeune-Jung was the victim of retaliation by the Nazi rulers. Arrested on August 11, 1944, he was taken to the Lehrter Strasse cell prison . On September 3, the senior Reich attorney at the People's Court, Ernst Lautz , brought charges of high treason and treason . Among the co-defendants were u. a. Goerdeler, Wirmer and Leuschner - all members of the proposed new Reich government.

During the main hearing on September 7th and 8th, Lejeune-Jung was the victim of litigation by the President of the People's Court, Roland Freisler . On September 8, 1944, the second day of the trial, the defendants Carl Friedrich Goerdeler , Wilhelm Leuschner , Josef Wirmer , Ulrich von Hassell and Paul Lejeune-Jung were sentenced to death . On the same day he was killed with a wire sling in Plötzensee along with the five other convicts Georg Alexander Hansen , Ulrich von Hassell, Ulrich Wilhelm Graf Schwerin von Schwanenfeld , Günther Smend and Josef Wirmer. Paul Lejeune-Jung went to his death with the words “My Jesus, Mercy”. Inquiries from the family revealed that the bodies of the executed were cremated in the Wedding crematorium on Hitler's orders . The ashes, it was said, were scattered in an unknown location.

The Berlin Regional Court overturned the judgment of the People's Court on April 16, 1952 at the widow's request. Lejeune-Jung's defense attorney had previously pointed out the “purely political” character of the conviction to the regional court: “The negotiation of the whole process, including that of Lejeune-Jung, turned out to be extremely dramatic, as Freisler responded to the heavily incriminating allegations from the outset the indictment was received, it was taken for granted and was heading for a death sentence without further ado. ”The lawyer said the verdict was a“ very grave injustice ”based on National Socialist jurisprudence.

Hedwig Lejeune-Jung, b. Foltmann (1888-1965), the widow of Paul Lejeune-Jung, moved in 1961 to her daughter Elisabeth and her husband, the doctor Bernhard Brinkmann, in the community of Twist (Emsland) , where she died on April 17, 1965 and on the local Buried in the cemetery. The family placed a memorial stone on the family grave for their murdered husband. The gravestone was created by the artist Paul Brandenburg , who also made a cemetery cross, which the Brinkmann-Lejeune-Jung couple donated to the parish.

Commemoration

Memorial plaques on the Reichstag

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fritz Aldefeld (ed.): Total directory of RKDB Neuss 1,931th
  2. ↑ 13 - July 20, 1944 , Plötzensee Memorial , 2003
  3. ^ Attorney Ernst Falk on March 17, 1942, quoted by Martin Schumacher (ed.): MdR Die Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation 1933–1945. Droste-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1991, ISBN 3-7700-5162-9 , p. 381.
  4. ^ Bechtluft, Horst-Heinrich: A monument of resistance. Remembering Paul Lejeune-Jung in the cemetery in Twist , Meppener Tagespost , July 20, 2016.

literature

  • Karl Dietrich Bracher : Your conscience stands up. 64 life pictures from the German resistance 1933–1945. Collected and edited. by Annedore Leber in collaboration with Willy Brandt , Karl-Dietrich Bracher. Mosaik, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1954, OCLC 604645729 ; V. Hase & Koehler, Mainz 1984, OCLC 498174645 , ISBN 3-775-81064-1 (in connection with the Forschungsgemeinschaft 20. Juli e.V. ).
  • Annedore Leber (Ed.): The conscience decides. Areas of German Resistance from 1933-1945 in Life Pictures. Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1957.
  • Karl Heinrich Peter (ed.): Mirror image of a conspiracy. The Kaltenbrunner reports to Bormann and Hitler about the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944. Secret documents from d. former Reich Security Main Office. Seewald, Stuttgart 1961.
  • Erasmus Jonas : The People's Conservatives 1928-1933. Droste, Düsseldorf 1965, DNB 452235138 .
  • Rudolf Morsey : The German Center Party 1917-1923. Düsseldorf 1966.
  • Josef Becker : The German Center Party 1918-1933. In: From politics and current events , supplement to the weekly newspaper Das Parlament B 11/68, Bonn 1968, p. 3ff.
  • Rudolf Morsey (ed.): Contemporary history in life pictures. From the German Catholicism of the 20th century. Mainz 1973, ISBN 3-7867-0408-2 .
  • Hans Maier : Symbol of the inner purification - The moral and legal aspects of July 20, 1944. In: Impulses. Contributions to cultural and constitutional politics. Stuttgart 1978, p. 44 ff.
  • Peter Hoffmann : Resistance, Coup, Assassination. Piper, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-492-00718-X .
  • Herbert Hömig:  Lejeune-Jung, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , p. 178 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Friedrich Gerhard (Ed.): German Patriots in Resistance and Persecution 1933-1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 1986, ISBN 3-506-73935-2 .
  • Jürgen Schmädeke , Peter Steinbach (ed.): The resistance against National Socialism. Piper, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-492-10685-4 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Werner Olles: Catholicism, Occident, Nation. In: Düsseldorfer Tageblatt. September 19, 1997.
  • Helmut Moll , (Ed. On behalf of the German Bishops' Conference), Witnesses for Christ. Das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhundert , Paderborn et al. 1999, 7th revised and updated edition 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , Volume I, pp. 378–382.

Web links

Commons : Paul Lejeune-Jung  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Lejeune-Jung, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lejeune called Jung, Paul Adolf Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist, politician (DNVP), MdR and resistance fighters against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1944
Place of death Berlin-Plötzensee